CETA student Colin Pfund in this weeks Hartford Informer

Student overcomes obstacles to succeed academically

 

By Audra Giese in Entertainment, April 19 2012

Sometimes all a student needs to flourish is finding that elusive passion that evades many.
Colin Pfund, after struggling through grade school and high school, found his passion at University of Hartford and has never looked back since. Pfund had a tough time before college; he had a difficulty focusing and was in and out with doctors, being medicated for ADD.
His parents were always there for him, working with his high school to guide him through his work. At one point Pfund didn’t think he’d be able to go to college.
But once he was admitted and started his college career, Pfund found what he had been searching for, a passion.
“Once I realized I was working for myself and doing what I wanted to do, none of those struggles mattered anymore,” says Pfund of his transformation.
Now Pfund is a semester away from holding a double degree in audio engineering technology and electrical engineering. If he can take the right classes, he could also work out a minor in mathematics.
One thing that Pfund did to help transform himself was to immediately become involved on the University of Hartford campus. Pfund recalls the president of the Audio Engineering Society making a presentation in one of his classes freshman year and thinking, “that’s who I want to be by the time I graduate.”
The president recognized Pfund’s ambition and nominated him to become president the following year, when Pfund was only a sophomore. After serving two years as president, Pfund was noticed by an education chair from AES and was nominated for a leadership position with the international AES.
Pfund is currently the Vice Chair of the Student Delegate Assembly for North and Latin America. Pfund’s passion also allowed him to become an intern with NBC Universal in the fall of 2011, which carried on into the spring semester and resulted in a temporary summer job.
NBC Universal hired Pfund again during the winter and he hopes to work there again this summer. Pfund was able to acquire hands on experience during his time working at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City.
He helped with postproduction on many projects and designed and implemented many audio/video-editing suites. “It was very fast paced and exciting,” said Pfund.
“It was a long commute every day but it was worth it. I felt like I had more responsibility and was a real professional.”
Pfund is also active on campus as a tutor, a mentor for freshman for the College of Engineering and within the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
“I love sharing my knowledge and experiences with people,” says Pfund of his time spent as a tutor. Though Pfund spends more time on his schoolwork than other students because of his struggles with concentration, he has learned to harness his attention to detail and has become a perfectionist.
Pfund has unlocked what he thinks is the secret to success after graduation.
“The truth is you need to build your attitude now so you can continue and bring that into the workforce. This is the time to mold yourself for the future.”

Student dedicates time to studying abroad 3 times

By Audra Giese
When Jessica Barringer was a sophomore at University of Hartford she participated in her first experience abroad, with Engineers Without Borders.
She went to India with a group of 12 students from UHa with EWB and helped give the town of Abheypur a clean water supply.
After Barringer’s initial experience abroad, she became inspired by the work she had done there, changed her major to civil engineering and worked to go abroad again to learn more about regulations and policies about limiting water usage and how water recycling could help with the crisis.
“The standard of life increases and with that you have people using more and more water,” said Barringer of the problems with water. “People just aren’t using it sustainably.”
Part of the problem is that people use the water and it is treated and put back into the freshwater supply, but at a lower quality than the original.
Barringer points out that this wastes a lot of energy and a lot of water.
“It’s a big problem and that’s why I’m going into the field. If nothing happens with this then I absolutely believe that the next world war will be over water.”
Barringer spent the fall of her junior year studying civil engineering in Galway, Ireland. After coming back home for three weeks she headed back to India for her spring semester, this time in Pune, outside Mumbai.
Though it was difficult to spend such a short time with her family and friends before leaving again on another semester abroad, Barringer found the determination to push through.
During the spring semester in Pune, Barringer took classes to finish elective requirements and quickly became used to being immersed in a large city and looking different than everyone else.
Inspired by her first time abroad with EWB Barringer also took an internship with Thermax India, an energy and environmental engineering company.
With Thermax she studied the water in the region and how the role of government plays in the attempts to find sustainable solutions for clean water.
“International relations are strained because of water policy and usage,” explains Barringer. “Huge water issues between Israel and Palestine and all throughout Africa can’t be resolved.”
Barringer points out that most major rivers in the world flow through so many different countries and when the countries upstream take more water and build dams to keep the water from flowing downstream, the countries there are going dry.
“There needs to be more policy about these main rivers in order to prevent conflict,” argued Barringer. Barringer graduates next month and has been accepted to graduate school at Oxford University in England to study Water Science, Policy and Management.
 Source: http://hartfordinformer.com/2012/04/entertainment/student-dedicates-time-to-studying-abroad-3-times/

Four ME Students Present at the undergraduate Research & Creativity Colloquium

Jenna Daly, mechanical engineering student, presented her research on "Characterization of an Unmanned Aerial vehicle Wing Design,” describing the aerodynamic characteristics of a single wing design for use in an unpowered vehicle. This work was initiated and done in-part during the new course ME 537/ECE 537, Multidisciplinary Modeling. Faculty were sponsors Tom Eppes, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, CETA and Ivana Milanovic, professor of mechanical engineering, CETA. Support was provided by a WELFund grant.

Christipher Brunner, Annie Becerra (ECE student), Gabriel Moses, and Jenna Daly, presented their research on jets in cross-flow. A numerical simulation using ANSYS FLUENT software engine was carried out to compute the penetration of a kidney vortex created by injection of a jet into a free stream through a circular orifice. The obtained numerical results were validated with available experimental data. The goal was to establish the necessary confidence in the predictive capability of the solver for this type of flow. The faculty sponsor was Ivana Milanovic, professor of mechanical engineering, CETA. Support was provided by a WELFund grant and a Connecticut Space Grant.

The University of Hartford and Herat University Colloboration

Student Architecture Exhibit Opens Wednesday

Student work from the Architecture Department will be on display in the American Institute of Architecture Student Exhibit. Work from all years will be on display in the North Studio of the Architecture Department (lower level of the Harry Jack Gray Center) from Wednesday, April 11, through Monday, April 16, from 3 to 8 p.m.

After the architecture lecture on Monday, April 16, at 4 p.m. in Wilde Auditorium, there will be a closing reception held in the North Studio of the Architecture Department. All members of the University community are welcome to attend

CETA students featured on front page of University website!

Ben Accardo ’12 and Max Accardo ’12

Twin Legacies

 

• Identical twins
• President and executive v.p. of Student Government Association, 2011-12
• Engineering students
• Parents graduated from the UofH in 1981

Ben: Since our parents went to the University of Hartford, Max and I have been coming here for years. When driving down to New York and New Jersey to visit family, our parents would pull off I-84 every once in a while to visit the campus and see what’s changed.
We’ve heard nothing but positive things from them about their experiences here, and clearly that’s rubbed off on us.
Max: Before coming to the University of Hartford, student government wasn’t exactly something that we had in mind. I got into it because of Ben. Someone already in student government told him that it was a great organization to get involved with, and from there we just took off.
Ben: When we were in high school we participated in sports together. We’ve been pretty close over the years through sports. We sort of start things at different times, but in the end we share the activities that we get involved with and usually we both end up working on them together.
Max: One thing our parents always told us is that college is what you make of it. It just makes you a much more well-rounded person being involved with student government. At a school this size, you really have the opportunity to make a difference.
Ben: You’re not just a number here. Professors make it a goal in the first couple of weeks to remember every one of their students’ names. I can’t walk from point A to point B without a professor or staff member saying hello to me. It’s really nice.
Max: A lot of people get a kick out of it when we argue over certain things – like “oh, they’re identical twins, look at them, they’re not agreeing on absolutely everything.” But you know that’s just the way it works. We share different views and different opinions. But in the end, we do have a great working relationship with each other and with student government.
Student government has definitely brought us closer. We’ve worked with an amazing group of people, and it’s been a great experience.
Source: http://www.hartford.edu/stories/ben_max-accardo.aspx

 

"Chasing Inter-disciplinary while Chasing Tornados"

On March 30, 2012, Professor David Mclaughlin, Associate Dean of the UMass Amherst College of Engineering and Director of the ERC for the Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere, CASA present a lecture "Chasing Inter-disciplinary while Chasing Tornados"

to the University Hartford Sigma Xi Club and the IEEE Student Branch.

Sophisticated tornado tracking systems are routine in known tornado-prone areas. But tornados also touch down in other, less prepared areas. How should we improve the response to weather emergencies in these regions? A better system would require collaboration among engineers, computer scientists, meteorologists, sociologists, and other researchers.

Professor McLaughlin gave a part-technical, part human interest talk that examined the challenges, pleasures, and opportunities for the interdisciplinary research required to address an important national need and provides an exciting and fertile learning environment for future science and engineering students.

Casa homepage http://www.casa.umass.edu/